Ally Marecek
This portfolio showcases the variety of marketing, design, and environmental communication and research projects I've worked on in jobs, internships, and classes during my undergraduate career. Many include a gallery to browse through or a file that can be downloaded and viewed.
Marketing, Branding & Design
Opal
Spring 2020 to Spring 2024
Skills: Illustration and Design, Marketing Content, Team Leadership
Opal was co-founded by several alumni from my university and was envisioned as a mentorship app for college students and early career professionals. At Opal I discovered a passion for marketing and I've been involved in various aspects of the branding, design, and marketing efforts throughout Opal's first four years. All of the work below is the property of Opal. © 2021 Opal and Company, Inc.
Marketing: As a content marketer and later the content marketing team lead, I worked on numerous social media posts, email newsletters, and blog posts. I was also heavily involved in reviewing our social media analytics and using our data to plan upcoming goals and strategies.
Find Opal on social media:
Head to our Medium blog to read some of the blog posts I've written or co-written. My recent pieces include:
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Self-Reflection in Your Career
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12 Ways to Change Your Life in 2022
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Lessons Learned in 2021
Core Values: I designed the following five icons to represent our core values on our website. The last few screenshots show my design progress where I refined the icons using feedback from my team.
Treasure Chest: The Opal Treasure Chest was a collection of student stories which were featured on our website in several career-themed categories. The Visuals team was tasked with creating graphics to represent the categories; below are my final designs as well as some unused ideas.
The Santa Clara
Fall 2019 to Spring 2021
Skills: Illustration and Design
The Santa Clara is Santa Clara University's student-run weekly newspaper, founded in 1922. I worked as the design editor during my last two years of college, creating graphics to accompany articles, ads for different sections of the paper, and social media templates. I typically created my graphics based on specific requests from other staff members, but I sometimes developed my own ideas based on the content of the articles. Over the course of these two years, I was able to try different techniques with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop and see my design skills grow and improve.
2019-2020
2020-2021
Bodi Branding
Spring 2021
Skills: Branding
I spent a few weeks working with a fellow student on the visual identity of her start-up, which focused on sexual health and empowerment. During my involvement we mainly focused on choosing brand colors and testing out some logo options.
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Extreme Heat Infographic
Spring 2020
Skills: Illustration and Design, Video Editing
For my Graphic Design II class we were tasked with creating an in-depth infographic and an accompanying animated video on a topic of our choosing. I focused on extreme heat in California and created an infographic with extreme heat statistics, different causes and effects of the urban heat island effect, and potential solutions. I used an isometric design and a warm-to-cool color gradient to create a city that illustrates the causes and solutions as the focal point. My video used elements from the infographic to summarize the most important information.
Forge Garden Rebranding
Winter 2019
Skills: Illustration and Design, Branding
For my Graphic Design class I worked both individually and as part of a small team to create branding materials for our school's urban garden, the Forge Garden, as part of an effort to update the garden's brand. The Forge Garden manager provided feedback throughout the project and ultimately chose one person's designs to use.
Digital Imaging Final Portfolio
Fall 2018
Skills: Illustration and Design
The Digital Imaging class I took in my second year of college was my introduction to graphic design and Adobe art programs. This final portfolio includes several pieces that we used to practice basic techniques and a final piece where we were encouraged to experiment with new tools.
Environmental Projects
BUG ELSJ Involvement
Spring 2019 and Spring 2021
Skills: Environmental Communication, Education
During my sophomore and senior years I took two ELSJ (Experiential Learning for Social Justice) classes that partnered with our school's garden education program, Bronco Urban Gardens (BUG). As part of these classes, I worked with teams to provide garden education to local elementary school students.
Environmental Education: In this class we worked in teams to create educational materials for students to use during online learning. My team created a nature scavenger hunt that encourages children to spend time in nature no matter where they live. We compiled instructions and game ideas into a PDF, designed some game layouts, and filmed a short video demonstrating our activity. Here you can view our final PDF; the photo shows my board game design in use in my backyard!
Urban Agriculture Practicum: In this class we led an after-school garden club at a local elementary school. We did mindful and educational garden crafts, helped the students care for their school garden, and did a final event to share our experiences with other students and parents. Shown on the right is one of the garden crafts and my team's final event activity, where students could create clay sculptures infused with different scented plants!
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Forge Garden Internship & Eggs-pert Sign
Summer 2019
Skills: Environmental Communication, Education, Illustration and Design
As part of my environmental studies major I completed a 100-hour summer internship at my school's urban garden, the Forge Garden. Every day was full of hands-on garden work in the Forge and at our elementary school partners. We also tabled at several outreach events. As part of the internship, I took on an individual project where I designed and painted an informational sign for our chicken coop; you can view my three initial designs (created in Illustrator) and the final sign on the right.
Extreme Heat in California
Winter 2020 to Spring 2021
Skills: Data Analytics
During my last two years of college I worked as an urban planning research assistant for C.J. Gabbe. Our research focus was an analysis of extreme heat policies in major California cities. I mainly focused my efforts on collecting data from city plans and analyzing it in Google Sheets. Our paper, "Why and How Do Cities Plan for Extreme Heat?", was published in the Journal of Planning Education and Research in 2021.
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Capstone Project: Sea Otter Reintroduction Study
Winter 2021
Skills: Environmental Communication, Research Writing, Data Analytics
During my senior year I took my capstone class for my environmental studies major. I worked with a small team and a mentor from a partner organization, the Marine Conservation Institute, to research the feasibility of a southern sea otter reintroduction to the San Francisco Bay. We researched past reintroductions to learn what factors needed to be considered and identify potential key stakeholders. We connected with stakeholders from industries such as fishing and water recreation, and conducted interviews and surveys. We then analyzed our data to make recommendations to our partner. All work was conducted remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Share Shelf Campaign
Winter 2020
Skills: Environmental Communication, Data Analytics, Marketing Content
In my Environmental Communication class I worked with my school's Center for Sustainability on an environmental campaign. My campaign team was tasked with improving a lesser-known campus sustainability program, the Share Shelf. We created a survey to learn about students' knowledge and opinions of the Share Shelf. We then designed ways to improve the shelf's organization and function, and created sample social media posts and informational posters that could be used to promote the program. Here you can view a final summary of our work.
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SCC Public Transit Study
Fall 2019
Skills: Data Analytics, Research Writing
My final paper for my Introduction to GIS (Geographic Information System) class focused on the distribution of public transit in Santa Clara County; this topic interested me because I used public transit to commute to campus. Using ArcGIS, I compared existing transit stops and routes to census tracts with the characteristics of transit users and transit dependent populations, analyzing the best places to expand public transit. In this paper I outline my methods and results, and reflect on what I learned about geospatial analysis.
